iPod Mini, the tiny hard drive-based music player that suddenly makes standard iPod players look the size of a bus (with thanks to my newly-developed conscience there for rewriting that to take out a reference to Kirsty Alley), has finally got a global release date.
After months of component shortages, Apple are now confident that they can supply global demand. Coming to a shop near you, the player will cost about UK£179 (€268) in the UK – but will without any doubt be considerably cheaper everywhere else in the world.
10:35 08/07/2004 When? 24th of July.
The iPod Mini will be competing with the lower end of the digital music player market, and will probably steal even more of the market from Rio and Creative. No doubt the imminent arrival of Sony’s new models prompted a personal visit from Steve Jobs, Return of the Jedi-style, to the Toshiba factory to encourage productivity. My thoughts go out to those poor workers who were possibly beaten to within an inch of their lives to produce enough 4gb Microdrives to ensure that no rollerblader will have to go without a pink MP3 player in Hyde Park this summer.
(Simon has asked me to point out that, to our knowledge, no-one was actually harmed in the production of the iPod Mini.)
iPod Mini
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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